Philippine Airlines nästa för One World?

Philippine Airlines (PAL) has outline its move to fly Europe next as Felix Cruz, PAL Vice President Marketing Support, confirmed the airlines upcoming planning application to the European Union after The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) schedules audit this month to review Significant Safety Concerns (SSC's) of the country's aviation industry.

“We hope for a partial lifting of the EU ban, at least for us”, says Felix Cruz.

PAL is leaning on the same policy EU granted to another Asean carrier which country was likewise barred from entering European Airspace. Garuda Indonesia was granted exemption to fly Europe and has regular flights to Amsterdam.

Cruz said the airline is likely to start flying Frankfurt which used to be its largest European operation followed by London and Paris next year. They will be operated by Boeing 777-300ER one of which is scheduled to arrive by November and two other frames next year. The airline also awaits arrival of eight A330-342 that will see the plane flying to Australia and Japan, and maybe Europe.

“We want to fly to New York, add extra flights to our current network in the USA but we wait for the US FAA to upgrade again Philippines civil aviation to category 1 from category 2” says Cruz.

“Honestly, there is little we can do but the government is working hard for that” adds Cruz.

Cruz said that they will add more flights to Australia. He said they will fly to Darwin which could start by early next year.

In the ASEAN region, PAL will boost frequency to Indonesia and will fly later to Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.

“ We already boosted the total number of flights to Jakarta and opened Bali earlier this year”, added CruzCruz said that PAL is heading for Oneworld Alliance and is currently in the process of upgrading its IT with Sabre ticketing reservation system, which could pave the way to a future membership with Oneworld scheduled for 2014. PAL membership to the alliance is sponsored by Cathay Pacific.